


Just Came to Say...

by Willowe



Series: Romance is Boring [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aromantic Tony Stark, Gen, Grey-Asexual Bruce Banner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:58:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7840330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowe/pseuds/Willowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's not avoiding his teammates, he's really not. Unfortunately they didn't get that memo and Bruce is the one stuck in the middle. </p><p>Luckily, he has a pretty good idea of what's going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say, I love writing aro!Tony and that last story demanded a follow-up. While I was writing this I got a lovely comment asking for asexual!Bruce as well, which funnily enough is what I was already working on. So I hope this works, and that you enjoy!
> 
> (Title from "Hello" by Martin Solveig et Dragonette.)
> 
> Also, if you haven't read "Everybody Wants to Fall in Love (But Not Me)" I highly, highly recommend reading that first. This story can't quite stand on its own and you do need the context of the first story.

Tony is knee-deep in parts for three different Iron Man armours when someone in the vague vicinity of the door to his workshop clears their throat. He’s been working without his music for the past… well, the past few hours at least, but he’s a little hazy on exactly how much time has passed since he had Jarvis turn it off so he could dictate his notes easier. Long enough for his voice to go hoarse from the continual talking, a fact which Tony is only just now realizing. He fumbles for the water bottle that had been sitting on the work station next to him, only to grab it and find that it’s empty.

“Christ, how long have I been down here?” he mutters to himself, rubbing his eyes with the relatively-clean back of his hand.

“Four days, give or take,” comes the response that’s _definitely_ not from Jarvis. It isn’t until Tony turns around and sees Bruce standing by the door that he remembers oh yeah, there’s someone else down in his lab now.

Tony waves him over, too tired to think up some witty greeting. “I take it you drew the short stick this time?”

“I’m here voluntarily, actually.” Bruce steps carefully around piles of discarded projects and stray armor pieces. “The others have spent the last two days debating whether you’re hiding from them or actually working.”

“They could’ve asked Jarvis,” Tony says. He’s not sure whether to be amused by how the others are apparently tip-toeing around him since his coming-out, or vaguely irritated that they’re now too cowed to talk to him face-to-face.

“Steve insisted that that would be a violation of your privacy,” Bruce tells him. “Natasha asked Jarvis anyway. He said you were working on rebuilding the armor, and Clint pointed out that that just because you have legitimate projects doesn’t mean you’re not still avoiding them. And so the debate continued.”

“Well fuck.” Tony laughs despite himself. “Sorry you got dragged into this mess, Bruce.”

“Come upstairs willingly and I’ll forgive you.” The corner of Bruce’s mouth quirks up in a faint smile. “Get some real food, and one night’s sleep. You don’t even have to see the others if you don’t want.”

“Hey, just because they think I’m avoiding them- which, for the record, I’m _not_ \- doesn’t mean I don’t want to see them,” Tony says, although there is a small pit of fear in his stomach that any interactions with the rest of his teammates would just be awkward and uncomfortable. He knows that that’s just because they haven’t quite settled into their new boundaries yet, since there hasn’t been time to have any follow-up discussions since his coming-out; first Rhodey was around, and then they got the call to assemble, and Tony has been working non-stop to repair his armor ever since the battle.

But Tony is too exhausted right now, too mentally and physically worn down from four straight days of work, to deal with answering questions and playing nice tonight.

Bruce must pick up on that because he offers, “Want me to pass along the message to them, so they calm down a little at least?”

Tony shakes his head. “Nah. ‘s not fair to you, making you be the messenger in this.” A thought comes to Tony and he pauses, frowning slightly. “Wait. Why aren’t you asking about what’s going on?” he asks suspiciously.

And his fears are confirmed when Bruce flushes and immediately looks away, obviously embarrassed at having been found out.

“Fuck,” Tony swears, but there’s no heat behind it. He’s too tired for that. He fumbles for the closest stool and sits down, before his knees can give out from fear or sheer exhaustion. “Who told you?”

“No one told me anything,” Bruce assures him quickly. Tony just raises an eyebrow skeptically at that. “They just… weren’t being very subtle about it. I walked in on Natasha and Clint discussing whether they were still allowed to tease Steve about his lack of dating if you were in the room as long as they didn’t drag you into the conversation. And then Steve walked in and told them that they had to respect your boundaries and they shouldn’t talk about any romantic things around you, which Clint protested. Very loudly. And Natasha pointed out that they had no idea what your boundaries are so how could they respect them. And… well, things went downhill from there.”

“Oh.”

“To be honest, I don’t think they saw me. They just heard me leave and thought it was you. I think that’s why they assume you’re avoiding them,” Bruce says. “I don’t think they would’ve been talking about it if they knew I was there.”

“But they still…” Tony took a deep breath. “They still, uh... “ Fuck it, there’s no other way to phrase this. “They still outed me to you. Unintentionally, yeah, but they still-”

“They never directly named your identity,” Bruce interrupts.

Tony stares at him. Blinks. “Bruce, you’re gonna have to work with me here, I’m running on a near-lethal amount of caffeine and an engineering-induced adrenaline high and not much else, and I’m not following you right now.”

Bruce is fidgeting, not the kind that usually comes as a prelude to him Hulking-out but rather the nervous fidgeting that he doesn’t actually do all that often anymore. Not when it’s just the team, at least. It makes Tony more than a little uneasy, seeing that nervous tic return now, especially since Tony has no idea _why_ Bruce is so on-edge. If he wasn’t basically running on fumes and sheer stubbornness, Tony knows he could’ve figured it out by now. But instead his brain is just a bit too sluggish to piece everything together himself, and he waits for Bruce to give an explanation.

“Ah, sorry,” Bruce says. He makes an aborted grab for his glasses, but stops himself before he can tug them off his face to clean the lenses while he talks. The frames end up sitting slightly crooked on his nose instead, and Tony has to bite back his laughter at the sight.

“I guess, technically, I don’t know anything,” Bruce finally says. “I can speculate, but that’s about it.”

“I’ll tell you if you’re right,” Tony says. “If you want to guess aloud, that is.”

Bruce nods, and takes a deep breath. Tony doesn’t know why he’s psyching himself up for this; Tony feels like he needs to be mentally preparing himself for whatever is going to come out of Bruce’s mouth, but he doesn’t think he’s capable of expending that type of energy right now.

“Are you aromantic?” Bruce asks.

The question is blunt and to-the-point but… it’s a _question_ , and not a rhetorical one either. Bruce isn’t jumping to conclusions; he’s letting Tony prove, or disprove, his theory however he wants.

Tony’s heart may be hammering in his chest, and he can’t really be sure that the shaking is because he hasn’t eaten in probably close to twenty-four hours, but he appreciates that Bruce _asks_ him. He appreciates it more than he ever expected he would, and it makes it so much easier for him to answer honestly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” he says, and if his voice is a little unsteady, well. Bruce at least won’t call him out on it.

“Okay,” Bruce says, as easily as if they were discussing some latest science experiment together instead of a part of Tony’s identity that, supposedly, still has the rest of the team in a fit. “Is _aromantic_ your preferred label, or is there a different one you use?”

Tony stares at him, mouthing the words _preferred label_ a couple of times, trying to get his bearings back in this conversation- but ultimately failing, miserably. “Who are you and what have you done with Bruce Banner?”

Bruce sighs. “Yeah, that joke is less amusing when you actually do turn into a different person every once in awhile.”

“Not what I meant.” Tony waves a hand in Bruce’s direction, the closest to an apology that he’s capable of right now. “I mean- you, what, got curious and went and pulled a Pepper on this?”

“I… don’t know what that means,” Bruce admits after a beat of silence.

"No one knows about this shit, Bruce. The only person who ever had any knowledge was Pepper, and that's because I may or may not have threatened to fire her and she took to Google like a bat out of hell." Tony pauses, frowning. "That was a mixed metaphor that never needs to happen again. Or a misplaced metaphor or- something, anyway, my point is you know about this stuff ergo you Googled it so, ergo, you pulled a Pepper. Which is something I didn’t think anyone other than, you know, _Pepper_ would ever do.”

“I didn’t ‘pull a Pepper’, Tony,” Bruce says, and he almost sounds amused now. Tony has no idea _why_ , considering this is the least-amusing conversation he’s had since- well, since coming out to the rest of the team earlier in the week- and he bristles, unintentionally, at Bruce’s tone.

Bruce notices, though, because he always notices tics and tells like that, and he’s quick to explain. “Tony, I knew about aromantic identities already. I did find the term while doing some research of my own, but that was years ago.”

“And you just, what, conveniently remembered it once our teammates couldn’t keep their big mouths shut?” Tony asks, skeptic.

“Like I said, when they thought I wasn’t around they weren’t exactly subtle.” Bruce shrugs. “Just how badly did the others screw this up, if you’re this wary about it all?”

“Bad enough,” Tony mumbles. He doesn’t want to talk about that, not when he can still hear Barton claiming that romantic love is a universal human experience, or Steve trying to stammer through asking if Tony’s just aromantic because of some unspoken trauma. He doesn’t want to rehash that conversation with Bruce, not now and probably not ever.

“Anyway,” Tony continues, trying desperately to think of something, anything, to talk about instead of this- when a thought suddenly comes to him. “Wait a second, what sort of _research_ were you doing that had you stumbling across aromantic identities?”

“Ah. Well…” And Bruce was back to the nervous fidgeting, which Tony couldn’t understand at all because there were realistically only a few things someone could be researching and still stumble across aromantic information-

Oh. That would explain…

“Bruce, are you aro?” Tony asks, blurts out the question before he can even reconsider asking it.

He’s not sure what response he’s expecting, but it’s definitely not the startled laugh and, “What? No!” that he gets. “I’m not aro,” Bruce clarifies. “I’m, ah- Well, I’m asexual. I think.”

“Oh, okay,” Tony says because, huh, asexual, he knows what that is, he can work with that- and then the second half of what Bruce said finally registers. “Wait, you _think_?”

“It’s… a little difficult,” Bruce says vaguely, not quite looking directly at Tony. “After the Hulk I realized I wasn’t… Well, it was different. Than it had been before, I mean. I tried to do what research I could and I found asexual orientations- and aromantic identities from there. But I don’t know…”

Bruce’s voice trails off; he’s obviously uncomfortable, and loathe to continue the conversation. Tony, however, is too invested at this point and is unwilling to let this go. “I don’t know much about being asexual, but if it’s anything like being aro… Well, you know it’s okay if you identify that way because of trauma or-”

“It’s not that,” Bruce interrupts. He huffs in frustration and Tony gives him a moment to collect himself; he wants answers, but not at the expense of Bruce Hulking-out. “I know that’s okay. But I don’t know if the sexual attraction is gone, or if I’m just too afraid to act on it. So I don’t like to claim any labels. Except celibate.” Bruce forces a smile, but it looks a little pained.

“Have you told anyone else?” Tony asks, because he doesn’t quite know what to say but the ongoing silence was definitely not helping matters.

“Who exactly would I have told?” Bruce asks.

“Point,” Tony says and, because it probably needs to be said, “I’m glad you told me, at least.”

Bruce shrugs. “At least now you know how I learned about aromantic stuff. And if there’s ever anything…”

“I’ll talk to you,” Tony cuts him off, because he appreciates the offer but even being this near-delirious from exhaustion this conversation is getting too personal for his tastes. “And, ah, just so you know, I’m uh…” He clears his throat. “Romance-repulsed. Technically. Since you were asking about preferred labels and everything.”

“Okay,” Bruce says, as if it’s that easy to understand what Tony is saying. Somehow, and probably since it’s Bruce saying it, Tony almost believes that sort of casual acceptance is possible. “Can I ask- do you experience no romantic attraction at all, then?”

“None whatsoever,” Tony confirms.

“Okay,” Bruce repeats. And, after a moment of consideration, he adds, “There’s a term for that, you know. Apothiromantic. No romantic attraction and romance-repulsed.”

Tony laughs. “Of course- of course you would remember a label like that.”

“Well I might have done some research before coming down here, just to brush up,” Bruce admits. He holds out a hand to Tony. “Come on. Upstairs. You need to sleep. I’ll placate the others while you make your escape.”

Tony accepts the hand up and lets Bruce tug him to his feet. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Tony, just shut up and let me help you, okay?” Bruce says as he starts to shepherd Tony towards the door. “I’ll let you deal with them all you want tomorrow.”

Tony should protest this more but, god, after that conversation he feels somehow more exhausted than he was before. “Okay,” he relents, and lets Bruce usher him out of the workshop.

And mentally, he makes a note to do some research of his own tomorrow. If Bruce can take the time to read up on aromantic identities for him, the least he can do is Google Asexual 101 basics himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't help myself, this story just demanded another chapter (and some actual resolution for once)!
> 
> And many, many thanks to FatalCookies for the quick, last-minute beta!

“You got him to get some rest, then?” Steve asks when Bruce makes his way back down to the communal floors. 

“I got him upstairs. I’m not guaranteeing that he’ll sleep, but he’s not in the workshop and he’s exhausted enough that he’ll probably pass out.” Bruce walks straight past Steve into the kitchen, not even sparing a glance for the other man. He sees, out of the corner of his eye, the surprised look that Steve exchanges with Natasha, but he still doesn’t look their way. 

“Well, that’s better than nothing,” Steve says slowly, watching as Bruce starts up the coffee maker. “Did… Was everything okay?”

“Tony’s fine, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bruce says. There’s a beat of silence, before Bruce slams the mug he grabbed down hard on the counter. His breathing is just a hair too fast and he knows how this must look to the others, knows it even before Steve takes an aborted step forward and Clint asks, “Woah, hey, you alright there, Bruce?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Bruce says, because the apology is the most important thing right now. He is seethingly furious, but it’s an anger that’s under control and the others need to know that. “I’m fine, I promise I’m fine.” He chuckles, and even to his own ears it sounds strangled and raw. “But, god,  _ Tony _ is not fine. What the hell did you guys say to him?”

No one says anything for several long breaths, until Bruce releases his white-knuckled grip on the counter and forces himself to turn around. He’s met with the same expressions he’s gotten all-too-used to seeing over the last week or so: Steve’s guilt and Clint’s stubborn annoyance and Natasha’s completely blank face. It was irritating before he knew what was going on; now that he knows why they look like that, it makes his anger spike all over again. 

“How much do you know?” Natasha asks quietly, her tone almost cautious, though Bruce doesn’t know if she’s wary about revealing too much information or worried about pushing him too far. 

“I figured out that he’s aromantic,” Bruce says. Everyone freezes, tensing slightly, but Bruce ignores them and continues talking. “I know he came out to you, and whatever you said got to him more than he wants to admit. I don’t know what was said, or why he came out, or what you all did-” 

Bruce has to pause to take a deep breath, to get himself back under control.  _ This isn’t personal _ , he tells himself, but in some ways it absolutely is. Bruce has done enough research into asexual identities to know that arophobia and acephobia go hand in hand often enough. He may not know what exactly his identity is, but he’s still getting a first-hand glimpse into how the team would react if he ever figures it out and tells them. And he’s not liking what he’s seeing.

“He’s not avoiding you,” Bruce says, because it’s important to get that out there. Right now there’s a part of him that almost wants to strangle them- and it’s not the monstrous, green, rage-filled part of him either- but he needs answers. He needs answers that Tony can’t or won’t give him, which means he needs to get the others on the same page as him first. 

“He’s not avoiding you,” Bruce repeats, because he needs them to understand this. “For the record he has actually been working on fixing the Iron Man armor ever since the battle- given the sheer number of parts down there, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was working on multiple suits, actually. He’s been  _ working _ , and you’re lucky that that’s enough of a distraction that he didn’t realize no one bothered to check on him in four days. How do you think that looks? He comes out to you, and between the battle and  _ you _ avoiding  _ him _ he doesn’t see you in nearly a week.”

“We wanted to give him space,” Natasha says, at the same time that Steve asks, “Is he angry…?”

“Frankly I have no idea what he’s thinking,” Bruce says. “I don’t know if he’s amused or pissed off or something else altogether. But when he realized I knew? When he thought you had outed him to me?” Bruce exhales loudly, and shakes his head. “That wasn’t good. Whatever you guys said still has him messed up, even if he won’t admit it. And you can give him all the space you want, but he put everything on the line telling you this. It’s on you to take the next step. Not him.”

“That’s not gonna be a good idea,” Clint says, and Natasha and Steve are both nodding, and Bruce has to take another deep breath to stop himself from screaming. “That’s- you really don’t want us to do that.”

“Why not?” Bruce asks, with more patience than he actually thinks he has left at this point. 

“I don’t think it’s going to go well,” Steve says. “Us talking to Tony, I mean. That’s not going to be a good conversation for anyone.”

“Why?” Bruce asks again. He’s getting snappish and irritated because he expected more from his teammates. He expected them to be better than this- he doesn’t know why, but he did- and finding out that they aren’t better hurts more than he ever would have thought it could. 

“Because we already fucked up once!” Clint bursts out, sudden and loud enough to make Bruce jump. “We were jackasses to him and he would have every right to be avoiding us and to be mad at us and to-”

“We hurt him,” Natasha cuts in, before Clint can work himself up even more. There’s genuine regret in her voice, and it almost surprises Bruce to hear it. “And we know why, but not how to fix it. Any conversation we have is just going to be us saying more wrong things, and hurting him more.”

“Or us trying to be supportive and just making the situation uncomfortable for everyone involved,” Steve adds, grimacing. “We’ve been doing research- or, well, trying to do research. There’s a lot of information out there though, and we don’t have anyone to bounce questions off of. We don’t even know what Tony’s boundaries are for questions.”

“Or for anything else, for that matter,” Clint points out. “The guy all but gave us an ultimatum when he came out, Bruce. Maybe we’ve been avoiding him, yeah. You want to put that on us, that’s fair enough. But that’s only because we’ve been so damn terrified of making this situation worse that we didn’t want to do anything in case we overstepped.”

“You’ve… been trying to be respectful?” Bruce asks slowly. “That’s…” He chuckles, he can’t help it. “Wow- wow, sorry. I, uh, I guess I was the one who overstepped here.”

Steve shrugs. “Someone has to be looking out for him,” he says, and there’s so much quiet anguish in the words, at Steve’s admittance that he’s unable to help Tony like he wants,  that Bruce flinches to hear it. 

“Wow. This is not what I expected to walk into when I came downstairs in search of food.”

Tony’s sudden arrival startles everyone in the room; even Natasha hadn’t heard him enter the kitchen. “We thought you were asleep,” Steve says, face flushed bright red.

“Yeah, well, hard to get some shut-eye when it feels like my stomach is eating itself in hunger,” Tony says flippantly. He walks past them to open the refrigerator, and Bruce knows he’s not the only one to pick up on the tenseness in Tony’s shoulders that even the genius’ obvious exhaustion can’t hide. “Wasn’t expecting to walk in on my teammates discussing me but, hey, at least I had good timing, right?”

He pulls a container of leftover takeout out of the fridge and pops it into the microwave to heat up. “I have to say, I’m a little disappointed in you, Bruce. Couldn’t even wait ten minutes after our heart-to-heart to go spilling all my secrets, huh?”

And this is Tony Stark at his worst, plastering on a fake public smile and throwing out well-placed verbal barbs to hide the fact that he’s actually hurt. But his efforts are weaker than usual, made sloppy from the bone-deep tiredness that’s still etched into every line of his face, and his words don’t make Bruce feel guilty or angry like they usually might. He’s hurt, but hurt  _ for _ Tony because he never wanted this to be the result of his attempts to talk some sense into their teammates. 

“He hasn’t spilled any of your secrets, Stark,” Clint says. “He’s been fucking browbeating us for treating you like shit since he got up here, but he hasn’t shared whatever sordid details of your conversation you think he did.”

Tony’s eyes flick over to Bruce. “Oh really?”

“I may have been a little… short with them,” Bruce admits sheepishly, and his confession actually startles a laugh out of Tony. 

“Huh. Well, okay. That’s… unexpected.” The microwave beeps and Tony retrieves his food, digging into it with gusto. “What the hell did you even say?” he asks around a mouthful of noodles. 

“He basically told us we were being jackasses for avoiding you,” Clint says. “I actually didn’t know he could get that pissed off and not turn green, so that was both terrifying and informative.”

Tony’s eyes widen slightly in surprise and he glances over at Bruce again, who just shakes his head. He can’t explain, not here in front of the others, that he let this get more personal than it should have. He’ll tell that to Tony in private, when the man isn’t half-dead on his feet and can actually follow the conversation, but he won’t do it now. 

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I went looking for you guys either,” Tony points out, instead of saying anything directly to Bruce. 

“But it wasn’t on you to start that conversation again,” Steve says. It’s exactly what Bruce told them not five minutes earlier, and he’s overwhelmed with sheer  _ relief _ that they understand, that they know what he was trying to tell them. “We gave you space because we were afraid of making things worse, but we can’t work this out if we don’t talk to you at all.”

“And what exactly is there to work out?” Tony asks, somewhat warily. “You know I’m aromantic. Either you accept that or you don’t.”

Natasha exhales, a little huff of air that passes as a laugh from the spy. “We aren’t trying to negotiate the terms of our acceptance, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Well, no, it sounds stupid when you say it like that,” Tony mutters, picking through his leftovers but no longer actually eating them. “But that doesn’t mean you won’t do it. It’s easy to be okay with something until it requires you to change how you talk or think or act. Then it’s just easier to decide that you aren’t okay with it after all.”

Bruce wonders how many people Tony has lost over the years, even if he never explicitly came out to them. How many people claimed to be okay with Tony Stark not reciprocating their feelings, until suddenly one day they couldn’t handle it anymore. 

How many people had left Tony because they couldn’t handle him being aromantic, even if they didn’t know that that exact label applied to him?

“We aren’t going to do that, Tony,” Steve says, sounding exasperated. “And if we do, I’d hope someone would say something to us because that’s not what we want at all. We’re just… We’re afraid of messing things up again.”

“You didn’t mess things up before,” Tony says. 

Clint snorts. “Yeah, we kinda did.”

That gets Tony cracking a small smile. “Yeah, okay, you did a little. But you were better, at the end there. I was being unreasonable by making all those demands-”

“ _ Requests _ ,” Natasha corrects. “And they were perfectly reasonable ones.”

It’s the second time that someone’s mentioned Tony’s attempt at speaking up for himself, and Bruce hates how little he knows about what actually occurred during that original conversation. It’s frustrating trying to follow this discussion without that necessary context. Still, he can guess well enough to feel comfortable speaking up and saying, “It’s never unreasonable to lay down boundaries to ensure your own well-being.”

Tony snorts and shakes his head. “Christ, just listen to us. We sound like a fucking HR political-correctness seminar.” 

But the smile on Tony’s face, and the faint blush of embarrassment on his cheeks, makes it obvious that he appreciates the support.

“Tony, we want to respect your boundaries, whatever they are,” Steve tells him. “We just don’t know what they are. Can we talk about romantic things if you’re in the room, as long as we don’t involve you in the conversation? Can we ask for clarification on something we read online?”

“You’re- you’re reading about this?” Tony asks, and it’s a genuine question but it hurts Bruce to hear it, because Tony sounds so genuinely shocked that anyone would want to learn more about this part of his identity. But then Tony laughs, bright and happy, and his small smile grows into a wide grin. “Sorry, I just- Pepper did her research and filled in Rhodey, so I’ve never- no one’s ever had to look this stuff up for me, you know? So I didn’t expect you guys to but that’s- that’s, wow, okay that’s good. That’s great. Thank you.”

He sets his long-since-forgotten takeout down on the counter, and turns back around to properly face- and study- the rest of them. “You can ask me for clarification, if you want, but I don’t know how much use I’ll be. Like I said, ironically enough Pepper is the expert in this, not me. Just because I identify this way doesn’t mean I know everything about the aromantic community, you know? But I’ll shoot a message off to Pep, see if she wouldn’t mind fielding questions from you.

“As for the rest…” Tony’s voice trails off and it’s clear he’s thinking about this, weighing his options carefully before reaching a decision. “Let’s assume that romantic stuff is a-okay, as long as it’s not directed at me. For now, at least. I can’t promise that I won’t be in a mood sometimes and ask you to cut it out- hell, I can’t promise that two days from now I won’t decide that I never want to hear you talk about this stuff ever again even if you’re not involving me. But until- or, well, unless- that happens just assume it’s okay, as long as you let me sit those conversations out.”

“Seems fair enough,” Natasha says easily, without any hesitation at all. 

“Please let us know what Pepper says as well,” Steve says. “And, I think I speak for all of us when I say that I’m sorry. We were kind of being assholes when you first came out, and we haven’t handled this that well since.”

Tony waves a hand and brushes off the apology. “No, it’s fine. You’re fine, we’re fine- can we all just agree that everything is fine? You’re acting like I was all heartbroken about this and I assure you, I really wasn’t.”

But Tony still has that pleased look on his face and, even though there are bags under his eyes and he still looks physically exhausted, the tension has bled out of his frame and he looks like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. No matter how much he denies it, the team knows how relieved Tony is to finally clear the air like this.

“Yeah, well, good,” Clint says. “Because I’m not doing this touchy-feely crap again, you hear me? Once was more than enough, Stark.”

“Screw you, Barton, you started this nonsense,” Tony shoots back. “All of you down here wringing your hands and worrying about my well-being…”

“We’d worry less if you actually tried sleeping and eating on a regular schedule,” Steve says, and he’s grinning too now because this is an argument that they’ve had a hundred times before- and will probably keep having another thousand times over.

“The day I take advice from a super-soldier who sleeps four hours a night…”

“Go to bed, Stark,” Natasha interrupts. “Seriously, get some sleep before you become even more delirious than you clearly already are.”

“Screw you too, Romanov,” Tony says cheerfully. “In fact, screw you all. I am leaving, not because I need something as mundane as sleep, but so I don’t have to listen to such hateful slander anymore.”

“Sure, whatever you say,” Clint says, rolling his eyes but doing nothing to hide his own amused grin. 

Tony flips him off as he turns to leave. The others are chuckling, and Tony is still smiling, and Bruce doesn’t feel like he’s on the verge of bursting out of his own skin with rage anymore. Tony claps Bruce on the shoulder as he walks by, squeezing gently in a silent thanks. Bruce just nods in acknowledgement and lets him leave; they’ll have plenty of time to talk when Tony wakes up. 

“So, I’ve gotta ask,” Clint says, once Tony’s gone and it’s just the four of them again. “How the fuck did you figure it out when we didn’t?”

Bruce laughs, and he feels almost giddy with an unexpected and overwhelming sense of relief. This wasn’t about him, not really, not at all, but knowing that the others are okay with this… It gives Bruce hope that even if he never figures his own identity out enough to feel comfortable claiming a label, that they’ll be as okay with him as they are with Tony. 

“Well, you know, for a bunch of spies you really aren’t as sneaky as you think you are…” Bruce teases and, still laughing, he lets the others pull him out into the living room where he can tell the story properly.

**Author's Note:**

> Tony continues to identify as romance-repulsed aromantic, because he's not overly picky about having super-specific labels to describe himself. 
> 
> Bruce is the opposite. He *wants* a concrete label, but he's still figuring out what exactly his sexual orientation is now that the Hulk is in the picture so he's hesitant to claim anything specific. Personally, I headcanon him as grey-asexual but ultimately celibate (I don't think MCU!Bruce would ever be willing to try anything, for fear of something setting off the Hulk).
> 
> I am not asexual. I've seen several headcanons about the Hulk's existence affecting how Bruce identifies and I've run with that in the most respectful way I can, but this is not my area of expertise. Please let me know if there is a better way to write him and I will make edits and adjust as needed!


End file.
